Sermon October 20 2024 – Psalm 104                            Rev. Betsy Hogan

Do you enjoy the science?

I very much enjoy the science. Not enough, in case it’s not obvious, that I ever really had any live desire to make it into my career – but I very much enjoy the science.

Biology? Absolutely. Physics? Well, mostly mechanics – once things devolved into the unseen movement of electrons and light waves, I started staring out of windows a bit. 

But Chemistry. Chemistry, I love. Except when it periodically betrays me by apparently having continued to develop in the almost forty years since I’ve sat in a classroom learning it.

Because as I discovered to my chagrin when we had chemistry-related emergencies in our house round about grade twelve for our oldest… I apparently studied chemistry “in the olden days”. And a few things have changed.

Most of these I don’t have to care about. But I’m still quite sad that my favourite, my very favourite, chemistry concept – the chemistry concept that I have kept alive metaphorically in my mind for lo these many years – well, apparently, the way I was taught it? Now known to be completely wrong.

But in MY day – and I’m not going to tell you the complicated way they teach it now because this is not a chemistry lecture – but in MY day the concept of entropy was simple and it was awesome.

Entropy was disorder. Entropy was chaos. Entropy was what everything was desperate to revert to, every compound was yearning to achieve. If we would just leave whatever it was alone, stop trying to control it, or alternatively maybe do something nifty to it like heat it up or shake it around, it might in an awesome grandiose burst of creativity – achieve entropy. Disorder. Chaos. 

Or even better, MAXIMUM entropy. Maximum disorder, maximum chaos.

And it worked metaphorically for everything! One could tidy up one’s locker at school, for example, but one knew that by the law of entropy, it would somehow mysteriously revert all by itself to complete chaos. My own house, my living room, my kitchen – all these, I have seen proof!, inherently bent on marching relentlessly toward maximum entropy AT ALL TIMES. 

It just seemed to me such a joyous sort of concept, entropy. That there might be, inherent in everything, that sort of urge toward abandon, that sort of explosive creativity, that kind of impulse toward the wild possibility of chaos.

It’s even reflected in that most UN-scientific of texts, the creation story in the book of Genesis that’s echoed in the words of the Psalm we heard just now. 

Because in Genesis, everything COMES from chaos – the Spirit of God begins the act of creation by moving over the chaotic swirl of energy and matter, everything without form and void.

And it’s out of that chaos that the ordering, the building, the shaping of life, is brought into being. Everything in its place, as the psalm says – the waters held within their banks, and the mountains protecting the valleys below, and the trees for the nests for the birds… And even the moon and sun, the psalm notes, knowing exactly when to wax and when to wane, when to rise and when to set.

So all of it, all God’s creation, in all its seemingly carefully constructed order, the ultimate expression of God’s wisdom, arising at its beginning out of disorder. Out of chaos. Out of – really – sort of the whole universe in a state of maximum entropy…

But tamed into control by the Spirit of God….

But maybe, just possibly, still secretly hoarding that sort of joyously rebellious urge to break out, to break free, to go chaotic, to revert to maximum disorder. To embrace the entropy.

With all its chaotic disorder, yes, but also with all its simmering, thrilling, energetic possibility.

It’s interesting, I think, that so much of the imagery and symbolism we think about at this time, in the season of autumn, has to do with the quieting of energy and activity. The earth around us, in this part of the world, is subsiding into its winter sleep. The harvest is in, the days are growing cooler, the nights growing longer – we move together in this place into a time when we’re separated for a while from the immediate experience of new life and new growth and abundance. 

And instead, as the leaves fall and the flowers and grass begin to die away, we’re driven into the period of quiet. The period of waiting.

Knowing that hidden away, beneath the frozen ground, something IS still happening, but we aren’t part of it. And we can’t be. As American poet Robert Frost writes, something has to be left to God – and in autumn as it moves to winter, something is. Everything is, in the creation around us.

And there’s a certain appealing restfulness in that autumn imagery, in the kind of autumn poetry that Robert Frost writes. Because even if we’re just thinking symbolically, and even if we’re just thinking metaphorically, still – the notion of being able to subside from the intensity of living, the notion of recognizing the need for rest, for letting go, for a time when we leave things to God for a while and let our spirits be restored, that may really be exactly what we need right now.

Because ironically, in a way, September and October are for many of us the busiest time of the year. All that nice autumn imagery about entering the time of rest aside, for most of us this time of year is often, quite frankly, a constant roar of activity. 

And so in the midst of school starting, and all the work of closing up cottages and getting ready for winter, and flu shots and meetings and workplaces swinging back into high gear, and what’s shaping up to be just a relentless number of elections, it’s well worth – I think – reminding ourselves… that in the cycle of the seasons, in the cycle of creation we’re a part of, this IS meant to be a time when we allow ourselves a deep breath. A restoration of the spirit.

Because we CAN’T do it all. Something has to be left to God. Within our own selves just as surely as for Robert Frost’s orchard.

It isn’t an easy thing to remember, the need for a pause, the need to stop for a bit and settle down our constant oversight of every aspect of our living and instead, even just briefly, leave something to God. We tend to calculate our value based on what we’re doing, rather than just simply being. And we forget that God in God’s wisdom looks at the wonder of the creation that the writer of the psalm celebrates, and quite apart from anything it DOES, declares it to be good. Just because it IS.

Because here’s the thing. 

God knows God’s chemistry. That is not in the bible, but it is my carefully considered somewhat scholarly opinion. God knows God’s chemistry.

And so God knows that energy can’t be lost and a system that’s forced to quiet itself into rest winds up positively simmering with the urge to bust out into maximum entropy. The leaves we carefully rake into tidy organized bundles – is there anything more alluring than the sight of them gathered there, lying waiting in piles as the poet Alison Morgan says? 

Because if Jesus reminds us to be like little children in our faithfulness, maybe a part of what he’s talking about is just noticing that. Yesterday they were just leaves on the ground. But today? Tamed into a pile, quietly prepared for gathering… Today they are a leaf explosion into maximum entropy just waiting to happen – IF, of course, someone decides to take a mighty leap into them, scuffing through them, scattering them everywhere, like probably every child in this country wants to when they see a pile of leaves.

So remembering this need for a pause, this need to stop awhile, leave something to God, take a deep breath and allow our spirits to be restored – it’s not just about resting. God knows God’s chemistry. 

And if we allow ourselves that deep breath, if we allow ourselves that quiet walk in the park, or that idle hour on the beach – it’s in that actual intentional subsiding and leaving something to God that at the same time all our creativity and inventiveness and inspiration start to simmer.

Start wanting to bust out into the disorder, the chaos, the possibility of something new, of a change, a different direction, or even just a deeper embrace of what’s already good in our lives.

It IS ironic, I think, that probably our most fraught time of the year comes at the very point in the cycle of creation in this part of the world when the earth is subsiding into its period of rest and hidden regeneration. Is that a sign of God’s sense of humour? Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s God’s idea of a very strong hint. 

Because no matter how long ago we sat in classrooms, no matter HOW many times we’ve been around the cycle of the seasons, we probably still need to be reminded. 

Pause a moment. Take a deep breath. Leave something to God. Let the rest and restoration happen, give imagination and possibility a chance to start simmering, and embrace the entropy.

Because in it is fullness of life. Thanks be to God. Amen.